EYE of the Storm
by StahlSentinel
Summary: A fireteam of Guardians find themselves in at the deep end when an extended stint on patrol leaves them stuck with a stranger from another world, whose presence seems to bring only trouble of various kinds. And many, many brouzoufs. On the bright side, with a new threat starting to make itself known and an old threat made anew poised to strike, maybe this is what they need.
1. Prologue

It was that weird dream again, complete with a bizarre sense of deja vu. A desolate, rocky valley in a foggy, indistinct landscape, seemingly full of metal obelisks inscribed with runes mounted upon the stumps of what might have been trees. A pair of stone archways at the valley's ends, one filled with sickly light, were the only other things that stuck out.

That, and the corpse.

There was always a corpse, slumped at the foot of the gate full of sickly light. There was always the same feeling of guilt, regret and familiarity at it. And there was always the feeling that they were both the person's killer, and inexplicably not their killer.

* * *

Althen woke up sweating. This wasn't an unusual occurrence, not any more. Three months straight patrolling the various Dead Zones across the world without an opportunity to head back home and unwind would do that to you. Admittedly, she reflected, it wouldn't be quite as bad if that damned recurring dream would just go away already, but judging by how frayed the nerves of the other half of her fireteam were, the difference might not be all that much.

Crawling out of the tent she had been sleeping in and removing her helmet (unless you were exceptionally foolhardy, you did _not_ take your armour off to sleep out here), she took a quick glance around, checking for the telltale signs of enemy presence. It waasn't just Fallen out here, not anymore. And sure, it was more or less the middle of the night, but that just meant an attack was more likely.

An indistinct shape in the darkness by the dying ashes of the campfire shifted and a glowing pair of eyes appeared, looking toward Althen. "Dream again?" a synthesised voice spoke softly. Althen barely responded, just nodded briefly, and the owner of the voice chuckled in response. "Figured." He paused. "Look, don't just stand around like that. Take a seat, it's warmer over here. 'sides, if there were anything coming I'd see it even if they were acting all sneaky."

Althen sat down heavily on a log opposite the exo Warlock. "Well, I wouldn't put it past you to get so caught up in... whatever you end up musing that the Red Legion could march right through here and you wouldn't notice until the next week." She prodded the ashes experimentally with a stick, achieving little outside of exposing one or two embers that were still smouldering. "So tell me, since you're the Warlock here, any ideas on what's with that dream?"

Tirren-13 shrugged. "Not really any more than the last... oooh I don't know, thirty times you've asked me about it? You know full well I'm more practically inclined anyway." His expression became irritated for a moment as he muttered under his breath, "Traveller knows we don't need any more warlocks who only care about theoretical crap..." This prompted an eye roll from Althen, who was all too familiar with Tirren's rivalry with... well, pretty much most warlocks, if she were being honest. "That said... I did recall something a colleague of mine shared with me a while back, a hypothesis that recurring dreams like that are visions from... I think he said the Traveller, but honestly I doubt it. He seemed to believe such visions could show the future, but also things happening in the present, or things that happened in the past."

"So there's the possibility that this dream's a vision of something that happened, I dunno, a few thousand years ago, and doesn't really mean anything any more."

"Could well be. Bear in mind though, this _is_ the same guy who seemed to genuinely believe that if you killed yourself and had your ghost revive you, you'd be revived well rested, and we both know how testing that went, so... a pinch of salt might be in order. Several pinches of salt, come to think of it."

Althen winced at this. She remembered all too well Tirren's attempt to test that hypothesis during a particularly boring stint in the Asian Dead Zones. Watching a friend get cut down by slap rifle fire or get punted off a cliff by an infuriated Legionary was one thing, but watching that friend nonchalantly blow his own head off with a hand cannon was another, and not one she was likely to ever get used to. The jackass could have at least picked one without an explosive payload.

* * *

Meanwhile, several miles away, a floating machine shaped like a cyclops' skull with armour plating scanned the body of its master for signs of life, and finding none settled into sleep mode to pass the time until their return.


	2. Awakening

It was that weird dream again, deja vu. If it even was a dream. The mysterious asshole in Jian armour was there, as usual, but Iathiel doubted the guy was an actual Jian. Even if he did spout the same kind of babble he'd expect from a Jian.

The mysterious figure waved to him. "It has been a while since you have last been here, has it not? Is it perhaps the case that you have finally discovered the concept of a sense of self-preservation?" Iathiel said nothing, just thrusting his armour-clad middle finger in the figure's face as he stomped past toward the portal, safe in the knowledge that he wouldn't remember anything about this once he was alive again, except in the brief moments after his resurrector kicked in. Assuming this was even real and not just some weird necrocybermancy related thing. It wasn't out of the question.

He could see the corpse of the Mentor by the portal – not his mentor, to be sure, but one of the more influencial ones. Perhaps the most influencial, despite concerns about his loyalty to the Culter cause. Something golden to his right caught his eye, however, as he walked onward, and he turned to get a better look at it.

It was another corpse. That was definitely Culter armour, and heavy stuff at that. He stopped, moved closer to the second corpse, stopped again in shock.

Commander Rimanah's corpse? But the guy was still alive... wasn't he? Was he? Come to think of it, he hadn't seen the commander around much in... how many years now? Weren't there rumours going around about him having a mental breakdown, muttering constantly about cycles of guilt, enacting bizarre conversations where he gave himself orders and reports on missions that had happened oh so many years before...

He shook himself out of it. Probably just another weird thing that just happened in this... dream... or some sick prank by the mysterious guy. Wouldn't put it past him.

Iathiel walked through the portal and woke up in an overgrown, derelict concrete building with a blue sky above. Which, he reflected, was very strange because his last memory was of being cut down by a Federal gunship on Mars.

* * *

Althen and Tirren had been trudging along since daybreak, having decided to give sparrow travel a break. Sure, it was faster, but there was only so long you could sit in even the most luxurious sparrow seat before every part of your hips decided it had had enough, thank you very much, and multiple days in a row of that only made things worse. And anyway, this was the last leg of their excessively long patrol route, the last one that they had been assigned. Which meant that once they rendezvous'd with Devrim in Trostland and compared notes, they could be back to the Tower where if they were lucky they might manage to bag some Strikes and see some excitement for once. Excitement that didn't show up in the middle of the night and interrupt their sleep, anyway.

Their easy banter was cut short by a distant whine, the telltale signs of Fallen pikes in the area. Usually they'd ambush them, but today getting as far as possible was the priority. Not getting distracted by a few dregs on hoverbikes and whoever – and whatever – came to investigate all the noise.

Tirren pulled out his ghost, had it display a map. "Well, I don't know about you, but I feel like we might not want to stick to the roads for a little while." He gestured to the map and the winding road displayed on it. "Besides, the road here's really rather rambling. We could just cut straight across, through this bit of forest and past that old bunch of warehouses, save ourselves some time and effort."

His ghost piped up with concern. "I don't know that's a good idea, really. Groups of old buildings like that tend to attract some nasty customers. If we're lucky it'll just be Fallen storing their pikes there, but we could run into a bunch of those spider tanks or a full-blown Taken infestation."

Althen shrugged, a motion exaggerated by the heavy pauldrons of her Titan armour. "Nothing we haven't handled before, right? And if worst comes to worst we can always just charge out the other side and pick them off as they chase us. If they even bother to chase us. Mark my words though, we're not going to find anything that _really_ surprises us. I feel like we've seen every kind of weirdness the EDZ can throw at us already, and the worst of it is behind us." Tirren's ghost chuckled nervously.

"I resent the attempt to tempt fate a little, but yeah, there's not much can go wrong here." Tirren replied. "Besides, if it's pike storage or something, we can just leave a few little presents as we pass." The two Guardians strolled to the edge of the road and jumped down the embankment into the trees, the Warlock floating gently down and the Titan simply hurling herself off the hill, having her ghost patch her legs up a moment later. The pike patrol whined past a few minutes later and were none the wiser.

* * *

Iathiel, meanwhile, was still getting his bearings. He honestly hadn't seen much like the place he was wandering around now – it was far greener than anything he had seen, _green_ green as well rather than the muted green of the fog that permeated some places. It hit him that this place simply didn't have any fog, he could see the sky clearly and looking at the sun actually triggered the failsafes on his cybernetic eyes to prevent damage. What kind of strange place was this?

Having wandered around the upper floors of the building enough and stared out through the many holes in it, he decided to head downstairs and encountered a minor problem. The stairs weren't there. Or rather, they were but almost all of them were sitting on the ground in a mangled, corroded tangle of metal. Iathiel sighed and pulled out his medkit, let it charge to a safe level. He'd never been a good judge of what was a safe height to fall from, but at least this didn't look like it'd be fatal.

It might not have been possible for his landing to be much louder. Even the lightest of armour used by the Secreta Secretorum's forces made a very distinct slamming noise upon hitting the ground, and Iathiel was not quite confident enough in his ability to dodge bullets to have been wearing light armour. Quite the opposite, he had been wearing the heaviest armour he could get his hands on to be able to last longer in the hellish crossfire of the Noctis Labyrinth. Landing on top of a pile of mangled scrapmetal only made the impact more loud and noticeable.

When the dust had cleared, Iathiel found himself facing a group of strange four-eyed creatures, staring slack-jawed at the black-and-gold avatar of destruction that had just dropped down behind them. From the looks of it they weren't creatures of the Meta-Streumonic Force – such creatures were badly detected by the EYE-vision implants he had upgraded his eyes with at the earliest opportunity, and these showed up only a little faint, suggesting their cybernetic augmentations were nonexistent, or pitiful at best. One with four arms and a rifle pointed at him and yelled something in a language he didn't understand, before scurrying away. Iathiel returned a one-fingered salute to the retreating creature's back as the rest, two-armed and carrying pistols and knives, began to advance on him. He reached for his BK13s and offered a prayer to the Secreta.

* * *

The gunfire was all too easily heard by the two Guardians as they passed the warehouses, skirting around the edges to try and get the lay of the land. Some of the gunfire was obviously Fallen in origin, but a fair amount of it sounded much more like... an SMG, perhaps? Althen brought out her ghost as they hurried toward the source of the sound.

"Whoever's shooting, it isn't a Guardian," the ghost stated. "I'm not seeing any Light from that area. They could be in really serious trouble."

Althen cursed under her breath. "What the hell would someone without the Light be doing out here? These warehouses are obviously bad news from first sight!" Tirren gave no response – he was busy reloading his hand cannon, a rather shabby looking one he had been given by the Future War Cult. It was called True Prophecy, and though there were no doubt _better_ hand cannons to be had, Tirren always found himself coming back to it like an old friend. Something about delayed-detonation explosive bullets was surprisingly satisfying.

The gunshots from the warehouse quietened for a moment, and Althen's ghost whirled in worry. "We have to hurry, they might be badly injured by now!"

The exo Warlock snapped his hand cannon closed and readied a grenade, a whirling mote of Void energy coalescing in his hand. "Or, they're reloading. The Fallen are still shooting, and not everyone has fancy guns that reload themselves. Althen, how's your super looking?"

"Ready, but I'm gonna keep it back for if we really need it. For all we know, it could just be a bunch of dregs and vandals staying the night here." She replied. "I'm gonna go in hard and fast, give 'em a taste of a seismic slam and figure out where to go from there. Feel free to throw the 'nade in ahead of me, soften 'em up a bit."

"Wouldn't be a Titan if your answer didn't involve 'punch them so hard they explode' would you?" Tirren joked as they rounded the corner. "At least that means I don't need to worry about you running out of bullets."

The first warehouse was full of confused Dregs and Wretches with a Captain trying to get them organised. The Captain's shield protected them from Tirren's scatter grenade, but was obliterated along with their body when the Titan's oversized pauldron, charged with enough Arc energy to equal a grenade's destructive effect, slammed into their side as they turned to face the Guardians. The fight was short and one-sided, but the small warehouse was clearly not where the gunshots were coming from, and the Guardians moved on.

* * *

The fight was not going badly, Iathiel reflected. He had plenty of ammo, some opportunities to let his medkit charge, enemies who were hanging back just in case he had some trick up his sleeves... it would just be nice to have some more room to maneuver around in, and to know what these strange enemies were capable of. Some of them had tried to sneak up on him using cloaking tech a moment ago, but it wasn't much good as even when his EYE-vision ran out of energy he could clearly see the distortions caused by their cloaking. Still, he knew full well how dangerous an enemy with cloaking could be – too many Fed special forces had gotten the drop on him with smart usage of cyber-cloaking.

A particularly large one hanging back with a blue-ish shimmer surrounding it barked what sounded like a command and aimed a large shoulder-aimed weapon as the creatures scrambled out of its line of fire. Iathiel noticed this in good time, and quickly attempted to navigate through his cyberware's menus to get his dermal sheath online – that would protect him from... well, anything short of having a building dropped on him. Unfortunately by the time the weapon fired, sending a glowing orange ball of fire hurtling down the warehouse toward him, he had gotten the wrong option and ended up turning his sound triangulator on. He wondered why he had even bothered buying such a redundant piece of cyberware as he went flying through the air and past a container. After all, he had his EYE-vision, and figuring out where enemies were was only usually a problem when dealing with enemies with cybernetics.

Disoriented, ears ringing, he ran a quick maintenance check and picked himself up. It was about time, he decided, that he try a different tack. A good display of PSI-force mastery would do more to convince them to back off than his more subtle skills. He collected himself, readied his mind and set about looking for a suitable target to try the Madness PSI power on. Probably not the big guy with the shimmer – with an air of command like that, being weak-willed enough to fall prey to that kind of PSI-force would be unlikely. Perhaps one of the hooded ones with what he assumed to be some kind of shotgun – a weapon like that would wreak the kind of havoc he wanted.

* * *

The Guardians had cleared two more warehouses before they heard the noise somehow intensify further. First a loud screaming that couldn't possibly be human, then a cacophony of Fallen yelling in panic, the barking voice of a Captain audible over the chaos. Both of them stopped for a moment, trying to make sense of what was happening.

"What are they saying?" Althen asked after a moment, as they began moving again.

Her ghost piped up. "Mostly they're screaming about betrayal, friendly fire. The Captain's yelling at one of them to 'snap out of it', 'pull yourself together'... not in those words, but you get the gist." It paused. "Oh. One of them sounds even more panicked than the rest, thinks he's surrounded by... _oh._ "

"Oh?" Althen replied. "This isn't a good 'oh' is it?"

Tirren slowed his pace. "It sounds like one of the Fallen just... snapped. Went mad, is having hallucinations or something. This is definitely not a good 'oh', nobody just snaps that badly at the drop of a helmet. Something caused this deliberately. Might even be the person who was shooting, there was a long pause before that racket started."

The Titan considered for a moment as they sprinted toward the building, which several of the less disciplined Fallen were now fleeing, paying little heed to the Guardians. "OK, change of plan. We go in, clean up the Fallen, and take stock of the situation. I want you to stay outside and fire in – you'll be able to get away easier if whatever's in there with the Fallen turns out more than we can handle. Don't know if ghosts can fix a broken mind. Besides, you have the kit for sending a distress signal."

* * *

The little PSI distraction had worked a lot better than expected. Iathiel had expected the creatures to just gun down their maddened friend once they started shooting at them – hell, even _looters_ did that without much hesitation once they caught on to what was happening. What had happened instead was that the ranks of the creatures had collapsed into sheer chaos, Iathiel had realised that the shimmer around the big one with the launcher was somehow protecting it from both bullets and... whatever the strange, slow projectiles the creatures' weapons fired were. He briefly considered throwing another display of PSI-force into the mix, just to get rid of the big one's influence, which seemed to be all that held the ones still alive from fleeing outright, but some gut feeling (in what little organic gut he had left) told him to wait for just a moment longer.

It was at that moment that a massive glowing ball of... purple... came flying in through the door (which he couldn't see from where he was) and exploded into a swirling vortex of... more... purple? The creatures caught in it evaporated away, leaving no body behind, and those that got too close to it were sucked in to meet the same fate. He almost dropped his weapons as he stood there, trying to process just what had happened and how to explain it to himself. It was incomprehensible, and he had had far too much incomprehensible in the course of his service to E.Y.E. Then he realised how close he had been to getting himself caught in that maelstrom – using Dragon's Breath to... what was the term, 'telefrag'? the large creature would have left him without enough energy to use his dermal sheath. Hell, would even the power of dermal sheath cyberware save him from that?

Gunshots brought him back to reality. Proper gunshots, from guns that shot bullets, not weird seeking blobs of light. Some of them were followed by small explosions. Gunshots however meant guns, and guys with guns he knew how to deal with. Assuming they were hostile. He tightened his grip on the BK13s as the last of the creatures was finished off and a very obviously human figure in strange armour rounded the corner.

"Alright, stop right there and answer me. Who the fuck are you?" he demanded.

The strange voice took Althen by surprise. It was human, probably, but speaking a language she didn't recognise in the slightest. Her ghost, hiding away, didn't recognise anything about it either. Turning, she saw perhaps the last thing she had expected. A person wearing heavy black armour covered in golden trim, seemingly undamaged by the battle... no, swiftly repairing itself. Their helmet was mostly smooth, with glowing eye slits and what might have been a headlamp that glowed with the same golden light, crowned with a golden metal halo. It did not look like the kind of armour Guardians would wear – it was clearly intended to be worn all as one piece rather than mix-and-matched with other pieces of armour. She tore her eyes away from the armour and took stock of the weapons the strange person was holding... a pair of rather blocky sidearms, their blunt muzzles pointed steadily at her. Well, they weren't hostile at least... not at the moment.

She slowly and carefully lowered her shotgun, raising the other hand in a placatory gesture. "Hello, can you understand me? I'm a Guardian of the Last City, if you're willing to let us we can help you get to a safer place."

Iathiel sighed, and set his cyberware to work on finding any matches with... whatever the person with the shotgun had said. Hopefully it was just an archaeolanguage that had managed to survive until the present day somehow.

The standoff persisted for a couple of minutes more before the cyberware spat out a very close match with a truly ancient language. Shrugging internally, he called up a highly compressed file that when opened would give him enough knowledge of the language to converse, thanking himself for not deleting it after Cilufer the archivist had given him it (among many others) when he'd only asked to know what one particular word meant.

He tested out the new – or rather, old – language in his head a bit before speaking. "OK, how's this. Can you understand this? Right language? Wrong?"

The Titan was visibly relieved. She had been worried that the long pause had been the strange person deciding whether to shoot, but now it seemed more like he had been figuring out language... maybe he hadn't spoken this one in a while? "Seems like it. Listen, I don't know who you are but it isn't really safe here, not for someone without the Traveller's Light to resurrect them."

"Hm. Seems good enough. Right, let's try again. Who the fuck are you, and whose side are you on?" The armoured figure replied.

Althen was taken aback a little. "Well, I'm a Guardian...? And whose side... I mean, you're a human, right?"

She was interrupted by the stranger. "Looters are human too. _Underneath all the drugs, anyway..._ Doesn't make them allies except when risking Secreta forces would be wasteful. Same deal with Feds."

This was not what Althen had expected at all. She made a vague "what do I do?" gesture to Tirren, who just shrugged, then turned back to the stranger. "Well, uh... I don't think you'll find any humans around who'll be your enemy unless you make them your enemy. It's the things that aren't human that are the main prob-"

"Ah, the Meta-Streumonic Force?" He interrupted. "So I take it those... things, they were some new kind of metastreumonic filth? I didn't think such organisation amongst the metastreumonic was possible."

"Uhhhhh. No, not really. They're called Fallen, they're... probably the least dangerous of the threats we have to deal with, at a guess, but by far the most desperate." She didn't bother to ask about the Secreta. There would be time enough to ask questions in a safer place – ideally back at the tower – and the name gave her a slight feeling that asking about it would not be the best idea, especially as the stranger was still aiming at her.

"Huh." The stranger replied, seemingly losing interest for the moment. He gestured with one of the guns to the spot where Tirren had lobbed his Nova Bomb, the sizzling residue of Void energy still hovering around the area. "First off, who's out there that you're gesturing to. I can see them very clearly, they've evidently got high-grade cybernetics but no networking. Second off, what the fuck was that purple shit. Weird explosive ball lightning?"

Tirren moved up near to Althen, having heard all that was said. The stranger shifted his aim so he was covering both of them. "Look, calm down a little, alright? If you're human... or awoken, or exo for that matter... we're more likely than not on your side. And the thing that disintegrated all those Fallen, that was a Nova Bomb. A... blast of Void Light."

The stranger seemed to accept this fairly readily, lowering his guns slightly and removing his fingers from the trigger. He had seemed very, very confident in his ability not to twitch and have them go off... come to think of it, he had barely moved, much like a particularly disciplined Exo. "Alright, I'll accept that you're not hostile. Yet. This... nova bomb. Where can I get my hands on one. Is it some kind of grenade? PSI-force ability? How the fuck does it work?"

The Warlock was taken aback a little. This stranger had a very odd mindset. "Definitely not a grenade... though I guess the principle's similar? Basically it works by calling upon my Light, infusing it with the power of Void, and throwing it before I lose control of it. Now I come to think of it, it really is just a much bigger grenade isn't it..."

Seeing that the stranger was obviously not convinced, Althen interjected. "Look, just call it 'space magic' for the time being alright? Otherwise you'll give yourself a stroke when you try to figure out how the Hive do the sh- stuff they do. Now do you want to come along with us? We're heading back to our rendezvous point, then you can hitch a ride back to the Last City. Assuming you wouldn't rather just sit around in the Dead Zone and see how long it takes for a Fallen dropship to notice you."

Iathiel considered this. A city, even if it was the last one, was a more familiar environment than this place, and moreover it would have people who could provide some answers. He'd probably be able to contact the Secreta from there as well... and there would probably be shops as well. Shops which might even have interesting new guns, cybernetics... He checked his account quickly. The stuff he had banked wasn't there, no connection, but the brouzoufs he had gained since the last time he had visited the Temple HQ were still there. He lowered his guns, and holstered them. "I'll take you up on that offer. Cities at least I'm familiar with, unlike whatever this place is, and I can probably contact the Secreta from there." A thought suddenly struck him. "Shit! My Scrab!"

"Your... scrab?" The Titan asked in confusion, as the armoured stranger walked over to the collapsed staircase and considered the height of the ledge. "Wait, are you going to try and climb up there or- Hoooly CRAP! How'd you _do_ that?" He had jumped up an entire story in a single leap, maybe even more based on how he had collided with the ceiling.

"Leg cybernetics, obviously," came the reply from above. "And brouzoufs. Many, many thousands of brouzoufs." There was the sound of some percussive maintenance on something metallic from above and a brief round of swearing, then footsteps as he returned to the stairwell. "Oh, the Scrabouillor? Nah, I can understand not being familiar with that one. Think a floating armoured security robot with a gun. Those... Fallen, was it? They had a few things like it, but a lot less threatening. A _lot_ less threatening."

"A Shank?" Tirren asked incredulously. "You're saying you have a very tough _shank?_ " The stranger returned to the ground floor with a heavy thud amidst a cloud of dust and rust flakes, followed by a strange floating robot with a gun seemingly just attached to the side of it. "Any other surprises you want to spring on us, or are you done?" He paused, listening to his ghost silently send a question to him. "Oh, yeah, there's also the matter of whatever happened to those Fallen to get them to freak out that badly. That wasn't you, was it?"

The stranger walked toward the warehouse's door, Scrab in tow. He covered the ground surprisingly fast for someone in such obviously heavy armour. "That was me, yes. I decided to utilise some of my PSI-force ability. The technique in question is usually referred to as 'Madness', a fairly apt description of what it does." He paused for a second, realising he had an opportunity to one-up the 'Guardians' with their strange space magic. "From what I know it's a technique most PSI-force adepts should know by the time their basic training's finished, among a few other little tricks. I'm not exactly a PSI-force master myself, but I'd like to think I'm at least sufficiently competent. Now, are we going to make waves here all day or get to this city you mentioned?"

The Guardians exchanged a glance and set off in the general direction of Trostland. Their report was going to be... _interesting_ , that was for sure.


	3. Rendezvous

The journey to Trostland had taken longer than expected. Not because their new acquaintance was having trouble keeping up, but because he seemed to not understand the concept of subtlety or that he could let Fallen patrols go by without immediately ambushing them afterward. They had gotten tangled up in several fights where reinforcements had shown up and dragged things on even longer, and by this point every living thing in the EDZ probably knew where they were.

But they were getting close, as was evident by the fact they could see the near-constant coming and going of Cabal dropships from the Red Legion remnants' base in the area. Luckily they were approching from such a direction that they wouldn't have to go past it – the armoured stranger, whose name was apparently "Iathiel" would surely try to pick a fight there, and the remnants in that base were a lot less forgiving than the Fallen. Althen had a personal theory that whatever ship they had up in orbit actively aimed for Guardians when launching drop pods, and she knew she wasn't alone in this. Guardians, however, at least could get up from being made one with the ground like that, after a fashion.

Iathiel had also noticed the dropships, it seemed, but an anecdote from Tirren about running into three or so Harvester gunships near that base and being stuck inside one of the bunkers with no rocket launcher ammo until a passing fireteam drew them away dampened his enthusiasm to go and, in his words, "clear the filth out of their warren" significantly. They might have a chance to reach Trostland without him getting himself killed after all.

* * *

Devrim Kay's day had not been particularly eventful, all things considered, so he was reasonably pleased to receive a call from Tirren's ghost telling him the patrol fireteam he had been expecting for a little while now was on the final stretch before Trostland, and that they'd found something strange, but not a bad strange. This could be quite interesting, he thought to himself.

He turned at a noise behind him, down on the ground floor of the church. A Hunter in very scrappy gear had slipped on one of the makeshift platforms that led up to his perch in the tower and fallen down to the ground. She had been around earlier, evidently newly resurrected and still getting the hang of Guardian things, so Devrim had been trying to offer whatever aid he could. Which largely boiled down to being someone other than a ghost to talk to, breaking open one of his remaining weapons caches, and directing her to another cache which hadn't rusted as badly when he last saw it, which the Fallen who kept turning up in the tunnels below the church had stolen a week or so before. It made him miss the times when the town of Trostland had been swarming with Guardians during the Red War, keeping the streets clear, finding ever more ridiculous places to dance and sharing news with him. Of course, there were still Guardians around here, mostly the newly revived who seemed drawn to the town for some reason but also the occasional veterans who stuck around for a while to help the newly revived find their footing, providing guidance on how they could use their Light, but it wasn't really the same. Since Cayde-6's death the latter had dried up – from what one veteran Guardian had told him, the Awoken out in the Reef had had their homeland overtaken by undead Fallen and the Taken, and needed every little bit of help they could get.

Which meant that the fireteam approaching Trostland now was this new Hunter's best bet for getting some useful guidance on the things he couldn't help with. He shifted over to the balcony and called down. "Ah, Guardian! How did it go?" The Hunter said nothing, but waved a camouflage-painted auto rifle over her head triumphantly. She seemed to have picked up a cape that provided better protection from the elements down there as well – most likely another thing the Fallen down there had stolen a while back. "The Fallen didn't give you too much trouble, did they?"

This time her ghost replied. "Wellll... they didn't make it easy, but we managed pretty well I'd say."

He nodded. "That's good to hear. I've got some good news for you as well, there's a couple of more experienced Guardians ending a long-haul patrol here that should be arriving at some point today. They should be able to at least help give some guidance on using your Light, and give you a lift back to the City." He checked his watch. "And it looks like we've got a minute and a half before the Cabal launch their attempt to take the town for the day. You might be interested in getting involved, but the Fallen usually respond quickly, so if you do, watch for crossfire."

Sure enough, a minute and a half later the first drop pods slammed into the ground near the cliff. They were punctual, he would give them that, even if their attempts rarely achieved much. He joked about being able to set his watch by them, but given that he had done that several times in the past...

* * *

It was late in the afternoon and raining heavily by the time the Guardians and Iathiel reached the church and made their way inside. They found Devrim and the newly-revived Hunter sat around a portable heating element on which a kettle was boiling water. He waved them over once he saw them coming into sight, removing some odds and ends from the overturned piece of furniture that might once have been a cabinet next to him to make room.

"Had a pleasant journey, I hope? You've missed the first round of tea, I'm afraid, but the next one shouldn't be too long." His gaze drifted over to Iathiel, whose presence was hard to ignore. "I'll admit, when you said you'd found something strange, I wasn't expecting it to be a knight in shining armour. They're not a Guardian are they?"

Althen shrugged. "Not unless he's somehow lost the entirety of his Light and memory. He says he's an agent of... what was it?" She turned to Tirren, who took over.

"The Secreta Secretorum, whatever that is. Or an organisation under their command called E.Y.E. Or a group within _that_ group called the Culter Dei. We still haven't gotten a coherent explanation, partly because I think he's not supposed to be sharing that information." He glanced over his shoulder to check if Iathiel had reacted to that – he hadn't, even if he had heard it, instead opting to scrape something out of a joint in his armour. "What we do know for certain is that he hadn't the faintest idea what Light, the Fallen... most things, really, are before meeting us. If what he says is true, he woke up in the warehouse where we found him not too long before we passed by. The warehouse was full of Fallen, so not much idea how he ended up there without something like transmat."

Devrim stroked his chin. "That _is_ strange. I've not seen armour like that anywhere, and that's saying something with how many Guardians I've seen come through these parts in the past."

"It gets weirder." Althen continued. "He used some sort of... 'PSI-force', he called it, to cause some of the Fallen to turn on each other, and from the sounds of it has enough cybernetics in him that you could probably stick fridge magnets to him. Honestly I'm surprised he didn't just leap up here from the ground floor in a single bound, it's... a bit ridiculous, even by Guardian standards."

They were interrupted by Iathiel coughing quietly. "That banner down there, it's similar to the ones the Fallen had elsewhere. Any particular reason it's still there?"

"Ah, it's been there since I set up shop here." Devrim replied. "Didn't seem worth taking it down, it makes the place look a little less plain. Besides, the Fallen in the tunnels below seem intent on it staying there, the few times Guardians tried taking it down they just replaced it a while later."

"Tunnels below this place? How extensive?"

"Not very extensive to my knowledge. My friend here-" he gestured to the Hunter, who was staring at the newcomers in fascination, "went down and cleared them out earlier today in... I'd say no more than a quarter of an hour. The Fallen have probably found their way back in there by now, nothing really seems to stick when it comes to dislodging them from there."

"That hatch over there, it lead to those tunnels?" Iathiel pointed. Devrim had barely started to answer in the affirmative before he was cut off. "Nnnice. Well, I'll just pop down there and give the scum the kicking in the teeth they need. Won't take a moment. Keep an eye on my Scrab." Unholstering his twin pistols, he jumped nonchalantly down from the church tower and disappeared down through the hatch.

"What a strange person." Devrim was evidently a bit nonplussed. "I get the very distinct feeling he's going to be trouble."

"Probably." Althen sighed heavily. "I got the impression that he was seriously considering that this could all be a dream. What was it he said again?"

"'It's not like this'd be the first time someone got stuck in some bizarre world deep within their psyche'. Not his exact words, his were a little more... _colourful_." Tirren coughed, and tried to change the subject. "So who's this? Looks like a newly minted Hunter, has she gotten past the 'has her ghost do the talking for her' phase?"

The Hunter seemed to shrink a little now that attention had shifted to her. Her ghost piped up. "Yes, we've been exploring Trostland and learning the ropes! Partly by trial and error. Devrim was hoping you'd be willing to give us a lift back to the City, since it's been a while since any other Guardians were around and they're out of spare jumpships at the Farm. Maybe you could help us with some of the finer details of using the Light as well...?"

Althen chuckled. "If there's one thing I learned pretty quickly, it's that Hunter and Titan techniques are surprisingly different, despite how similar some aspects look on the surface. I can help with grenades and punching things, but really you'd be better off with someone who knows the mindset. Really, I wouldn't fret too much about it. From what I've heard other Hunters say, it's one of those things you figure out in your own time, but having some guidance from someone who knows the ropes doesn't hurt. Might take a bit of doing to find a Hunter who's sticking around in the City – most of the time they just stop by to drop off their loot into their vault, grab some bounties and then disappear off again – but again, you'll figure it out one way or another."

"You might even be better off without a mentor." Tirren added. "Hunters can be a bit... obtuse with regards to that sort of thing, and by that I mean it's not uncommon for them to drop a newbie in at the deep end and rescue them if it looks like they're sinking instead of swimming. Hell, one story I hea- ow! What was that for?"

"It might not be the greatest idea to tell her all your horror stories about Hunter teaching methods, especially given you heard them from the Hunters being taught, yeah? Especially given how they like to embellish stories."

They were interrupted by the kettle starting to whistle.

"Ah, there we go." Devrim said with satisfaction. "I hope you don't mind your tea without milk – I haven't been able to get hold of much this week, and ran out a couple of days ago." He set about pouring several cups of tea, producing some battered enameled metal cups and a few teabags. "I do appreciate your helping her. As much as I would like to help further, there is only so much I can do. Besides, it's rather lonely out here, and though I know Hunters have a reputation for being loners I can't help but feel having some more socialisation will do her good." He paused. "Do you think our heavily-armoured friend will want any tea?" Seeing both Guardians shrug, he continued. "Well, I'll pour him one anyway. If he doesn't want it, well... all the more for me, I suppose." He grinned.

The Hunter's ghost winked into existence again. "I'm sure we'll enjoy going to the City! I've heard so much about it from Guardians in the field while I was searching for my Guardian. Like how there's an entire street that's nothing but ramen shops, all run by frames, and how there's actually a secret Golden Age armoury hidden behind Banshee-44's stockroom, and how the sweeping frames in the Tower are secretly planning a coup, and how the cryptarch is a stingy... uhhh." The little light's thoughts had evidently just caught up with its motor mouth, prompting some laughter.

"Oh yeah, Master Rahool." Tirren chuckled. "Yeah, there's a saying among Guardians that he can extract anything – absolutely anything – from an engram... _except_ anything you actually want or need." This prompted some more snickering from Althen, and Tirren made an exagerrated shrugging gesture. "I haven't seen much proof against it being true, more's the pity!"

Althen straightened up a bit. "Heh heh... ah, joking aside, that one about there being an entire street of ramen shops, that one's actually true. Nobody knows why it's like that, not even the frames running the shops, and it's apparently been that way for a long, long time. Just goes to show, I guess... sometimes truth is as strange as tall tales."

* * *

A number of heavy footfalls heralded Iathiel's return, followed by his sudden appearance jumping up from the ground to Devrim's lookout spot. ("Knew he'd do that sooner or later," Althen muttered, before being shushed by Tirren) He was carrying an engram somewhat roughly under one arm, glowing green. There was a brief, awkward pause.

Eventually he broke the silence with a fleeting air of frustration. "I've cleared out the basement of the Fallen infesting it. Despite running out of bullets halfway through the job. Don't get how you people never seem to run out. Space magic cover that too?" There was another pause, during which an eye roll was almost audible within his helmet, then he lifted the engram. "Anyway, I found this thing. No idea what it is, doesn't look like any material I've seen before... except maybe hardlight, but that requires a power source. Didn't seem to react to being knocked against a wall either."

"Oh, that's an engram." Tirren spoke up, ever eager to explain things. "As I understand it, it's a kind of compressed data lattice, a fourth or fifth state of matter..." He trailed off, sensing somehow that this was not the kind of explanation that was wanted. "It's basically a container that stores stuff as data. Usually loot of some kind. They have to be decrypted before you can get at the stuff inside, but most of the time a ghost can do that... whiiich would explain why you weren't able to get it open. On a sidenote, ammo boxes work kind of the same, except with pretty much no encryption, so you don't need a ghost to get the bullets out of it."

"Ah-h-h. So it has to be hacked open?" Iathiel turned the engram over in his hands. "Weird fucking way to store things, what kind of...?" He stopped short. "Waaaait a moment. Wait just a moment. Ammo boxes that work similarly to this? Would they happen to be small, box-like, glowing white and occasionally green?" Tirren started to nod, but barely got to open his mouth before being interrupted. " _Why the fuck was I not made aware of this sooner? Would it have killed you to fucking tell me somewhere along the way from those shitty little warehouses to this dump?_ "

The Warlock brought his hands up in a placatory gesture. "I... kinda assumed you already knew, seeing as you didn't seem to be having ammo problems at any point along the way."

There was a loud metallic thud as Iathiel's free hand and helmet collided violently. "Ffffucking... alright, look, this may be the most obvious thing to most but every single storage slot I had was either taken up by the pistols, my medkit, or all the spare magazines for the pistols that I had on me. Enough bullets to clear the entirety of New Eden of streumonic bullshit, and then some." He made a motion that would have been pinching the bridge of his nose if his helmet hadn't been in the way. "OK, fine. Not like lack of bullets was too much of an inconvenience, it's fortunate I've always got a sword on me, but... fegh. Next time, I'd like to know about shit like this _before_ it bites me in the arse. Anyway. This engram thing, get it open for me. I don't have the patience to hack even the most poorly-secured of doors right now."

Tirren caught the thrown engram, turned it over delicately, then summoned his ghost, which flickered rays of light over the polyhedral storage device. It seemed to melt away and reshape itself, coming to rest a moment later in the shape of a bullpup rifle with a suppressor mounted on the muzzle – a pulse rifle. He paused, looking it over, before getting up and handing it over to the waiting armoured figure. "Well, that brings back memories. Didn't think Cassoid still made the old Psi Ferox series. Unless that thing's somehow managed to stay hidden down there through Traveller knows how many Guardians searching for loot..."

Catching the weapon roughly, Iathiel gave it a quick once over, tested its weight, and pointed it at the window experimentally. Then he checked the magazine, prompting a silent groan from Devrim. Sure, Guardians not understanding basic gun safety was nothing new, but that didn't make it any less disappointing whenever things like this happened. Fortunately the magazine was empty, but this didn't make it any better.

The Guardians and Iathiel stuck around for a couple of hours, the Guardians and Devrim sharing news and stories, the E.Y.E. agent tinkering with his Scrabouillor away from the rest of the group. At last they said their goodbyes and set about preparing for the trip back to the City – sleeping on actual beds was not something they wanted to delay for any longer than necessary. Althen, unfortunately, drew the short straw when deciding who would take who in their jumpship, and ended up having to put up with Iathiel's grumbling about ammo boxes for the entirety of the mercifully short journey.


End file.
